A Jesuit priest and bible scholar has written a fierce response to Philip Pullman's retelling of the life of Jesus, claiming that the author distorted history to reinforce his own unfavourable views about institutional Christianity.

Father Gerald O'Collins, author of over 50 books and professor of theology at the Gregorian University in Rome for over 30 years, will publish a book later this month taking on Pullman's assertion, in his novel The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, that "this is a story".

Pullman's bestselling book, published in March, gives Jesus a manipulative twin brother, Christ, who eventually betrays him. The miracles of the gospels are given plausible explanations, and Jesus eventually condemns the concept of a church, something he believes would make the devil "rub his hands with glee".

"Jesus is not in a position to correct misrepresentations, especially serious ones that the public, often pretty gullible in these matters, is inclined to accept at face value," O'Collins told the Guardian. He believes that Pullman's aim in the novel was to cast doubt on "belief in the divine identity of Jesus". In his book, Philip Pullman's Jesus, the priest asks if the author used "or rather misuse[d] the story of Jesus to wage war on Christianity".

"His distaste for institutional religion is well documented in His Dark Materials," he writes. "What better way to demolish Christianity than by suggesting that it was founded on deliberate fraud: not on a true resurrection of Jesus, but on the theft of his body, and encounters with his twin masquerading as Jesus risen from the dead?"

He takes issue with Pullman's claim to throw "fresh light on who Jesus was". "What I think he's doing is to distort the history of Jesus, in the interests of what he sees as higher truths. So it's not so much about fresh light as Pullman's personal ideology ... it throws fresh light not so much on who Jesus was, but on who Pullman is."

Although he is also highly critical of "historical misinformation" in the likes of The Da Vinci Code, O'Collins is not opposed in principle to fictionalisations of the life of Jesus. "I am a great admirer of Dorothy Sayers, whose Man Born to be King is an extraordinarily imaginative retelling of the story of Jesus," he said, pointing in his book to other successful retellings by Gerd Theissen and Anne Rice. "[But] Pullman was not writing historical fiction in the way that it should be written: stick with what we know, add dialogue, weather, psychology, new characters."

Pullman, O'Collins said, "has an extraordinary imagination but seemed inhibited about letting his imagination reach out to Jesus. He badged the book as a story, an ambiguous word ... Over and over again he rewrote episodes rather than retelling the story ... The British Isles have had a great tradition of historical novels, and I felt that Pullman failed to do what others have done so well in that genre."

In his book, O'Collins criticises Pullman for "picking, choosing and changing" what he wants from the gospels, altering the story "over and over again in the interests of his own 'truth' or ideology", making historical errors and conducting poor historical research.

He takes particular issue with Pullman's retelling of the parable of the prodigal son. In Pullman's version, Joseph welcomes Jesus home to a feast after his 40 days in the wilderness, during which time Christ plays the role of the tempter. When Jesus tells the story himself, in terms similar to the version in Luke's gospel, Christ is listening and feels mortified by his brother.

O'Collins calls this one of "the most egregious examples of Pullman's tampering with the text" as it removes from the parable its central message: the unconditional mercy of God embodied in the person of Jesus. "It might prompt some readers into asking themselves: should this book be renamed The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Pullman?" he writes.

Contrary to O'Collins's misgivings, Pullman's book was largely positively reviewed. In the Observer, Richard Holloway said "there is no doubt in my mind that Pullman has a complete grasp of the intricacies of the quest for the historical Jesus", while in the Guardian, Rowan Williams, although not uncritical, said it was "mostly Pullman at his very impressive best, limpid and economical".

O'Collins's book is published on 24 August by religious press Darton Longman and Todd. Pullman and his publisher Canongate declined to comment on its claims, but they are only likely to boost sales of The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. This does not bother O'Collins. "Of course, my book points people toward Pullman, but he has the great merit of suggesting that people check against the gospels what he has written," he said. "His distortions and omissions should be pointed out."